


How Was I To Know (that you're my home)

by eternalhiraeth



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Androidcest, Angst, Canon Compliant, Cest Is Best, F/M, Sibling Incest, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:39:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalhiraeth/pseuds/eternalhiraeth
Summary: 18, 17 and a lifetime of getting back home.





	How Was I To Know (that you're my home)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Brighton's Forest Fire, one of my favourite songs.
> 
> This is the product of a week's worth of obsessing over these two for no apparent reason. It's also my way of making peace with Toriyama's canon, though I haven't watched Super (I did watch the movies), so I can't promise it fits with everything, but I tried my best. I've always found comfort in the fact that the androids are somewhat immortal, so in my mind this is 100% how the story ends. 
> 
> It was supposed to be a quick fic to procrastinate a longer project, but it ended up being twice as long as I intended and taking ten times more time. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Eighteen wakes up in a world that doesn't belong to her.

She feels nauseous and sore all over, and the fact that she's laying on some unknown, rock-hard floor doesn't help matters. An imaginary fog clouds her vision and clogs her ears, so it takes a moment for her brain to process the sound of male voices that arises from her proximities. That's when she reacts and rushes to stand, but her body sways side to side like it's missing a crucial part that used to help her balance. Her eyes scan herself and then her surroundings, desperately trying to find a familiar feature in the environment.

She's standing on some kind of floating platform that supports a small building resembling a palace, and no matter which way she looks, all she can see is the infinite blue of the sky. It's claustrophobic, in an ironic way. She's starting to consider the possibility of being dead when she notices the stares belonging to the group of men she heard earlier, none of whom seem equipped with the power nor the will to hurt her. There's a dull feeling at the back of her mind telling her that this sight means something to her, but all that gets through her clouded brain is a sense of panic and a persistent voice in her head that screams "where is it?".

One of the men disengages from the discussion all the rest seem to be caught up in and shoots her a grin that she immediately wants to punch off his face. He's short and bald and after a second she actually recognizes him: he's the guy that destroyed the device capable of killing her and her brother.

Her brother.

She suddenly feels as if her blood has been frozen, causing her heart to forcefully pump out ice and spread it throughout her body. Her fingers twitch and all color would drain from her face, if that old man had left any.

The sensation isn't new to her. As memories from the previous days flash before her eyes, she recalls the short amount of time that took place between her twin being absorbed by Cell and her meeting with the same fate. Alarms go off in her head as they did then, telling her that something is very, very wrong and can never be made right again.

The short man is talking to her. Something about bringing her here after Cell spat her out, which she certainly doesn't remember. The guy has a crush on her or something like that. She isn't really thinking beyond the irrational need to escape, to fly back to earth and find a way to shut down the atrocious machine that her body has become. She turns around to leave.

Just as grief and dread begin to weaken her muscles and press down on her chest, the sky goes completely dark. She glances around, searching for some sort of explanation, not really caring if she doesn't get one. All the men seem to have gathered around something on the floor that she can't see from her position.

Accompanied by a deafening growl, a gigantic creature slithers its way across the firmament to face the humans, although given his size he could be addressing every soul on earth. Eighteen runs to hide behind the tiny palace purely out of instinct: there's not much she can lose at this point.

There seems to be a conversation taking place between the men and the dragon _"(did she hear that right_?)" and although her hiding place hinders her hearing of the former, the dragon's voice reminds her of thunder: startling, and impossible to miss.

Her shock is so enormous that when the thing states that all people murdered by Cell will be resurrected, it doesn't even register with her. It isn't until after the little guy mentions her and Seventeen that she reacts. He tries to restore their human condition, but when the dragon denies him, he settles for removing the bombs lodged inside their bodies. _"Does that mean…?"._

Another of the guys quickly confirms her suspicions. Her brother should, by all means, be brought back to life. She feels the thorns lodged inside her lungs begin to wither and turn to dust.

She overhears the bald guy (whose name is Krillin, she can't help but learn) being questioned about the reason for such a generous act; and she can't help but perk up her ears, a little curious as to why he included Seventeen in his wish as well.

"They look like they make a good couple. She'll be happy with him," Krillin answers.

For some reason that she'll spend years trying to understand, the first thought that crosses her mind isn't how ridiculous a claim that is, or how disgusting it should be to think of her brother like that. No, her reaction is the same passive acknowledgment one may show after hearing someone say "the sky is blue", or "Saiyans are gluttons". Nobody would think -or even know how- to deny it.

When she catches herself, she is stunned for a moment. Has Gero messed with something in her head that prevented her from forgetting such basic facts? How far do those alterations go? She forfeits that train of thought in favor of jumping out of her hiding spot and revealing herself to Krillin.

"Idiot!" she yells, not knowing why she is trying so hard to make the truth sound believable, or why she wants this guy to know it in the first place. "Seventeen is my twin brother!"

He looks embarrassed, but Eighteen doesn't even have time to feel satisfied about it before one of his friends chuckles and says, "You're lucky, siblings can't get married!"

She shoots the guy a murderous glare as a wave of rage washes over her, turning her hands into fists and rising her energy levels. She can't remember the last time she wanted to hurt someone this much, and she feels hot for some reason. 

She takes a deep breath to steady herself, lets her gaze drift over to Krillin, (who's standing in front of her with a sheepish grin) and channels her fury into a rebuff that guarantees she'll never have to deal with him again. Then she turns back and flies off into the sky, a single goal in her mind: finding her brother.

The world once belonged to them, and even if she doesn't remember it, she needs to make sure it does again.

|||

It takes three hills destroyed in a fit of frustration for her to finally let out a scream and drop to the ground. Her covered knees scrape and bruise and get tinted with orange pigment, but she has long stopped caring about the state of her clothes. Her hair is tousled, plastered to her forehead with sweat and rain, and there’s a scratch on her cheek that was caused by a flying piece of debris from an empty building she blasted a couple days ago.

She screams again, wanting to pull at her own hair or break some of her bones. The scene is reminiscing of a small child having a temper tantrum (and honestly, she quite feels like one) but it’s not like she can remember ever doing that anyway.

It’s been a week since Cell’s defeat and she’s been roaming around the world ever since, looking for her brother. At first, her desperation hadn’t allowed her to stop for a single second, not even to realize she had no idea where to go. It had become obvious after a few hours of pointless wandering, however. She’d cursed Dr. Gero for the hundredth time for rendering them unable to sense each other’s energy and then set off to find one of Goku’s friends, anyone that could shed some light on her twin’s whereabouts. This led her (much to her irritation) to Krillin, who told her that resurrected people usually reappear at the place they were killed. To be fair, that was the first place she would’ve checked, had it not been for her impaired judgment. 

When she finally got to that damn island, of course, Seventeen was nowhere to be found. It stood to reason: if it’d been her who’d waken up in a such a desolate place, with a faulty memory a soul still impregnated with the feeling of death, she too would have fled.

Nonetheless, she stayed there for a while, just in case, and then flew over the surrounding area, only to be met with a gust of wind that cooled her cheeks and coated her hair with sand. She didn’t bother combing it with her hands and instead spent the next couple days wandering around, expecting her brother to pop up from behind a rock at any moment, proclaiming himself the winner of a very elaborate, very twisted hide and seek game. He’d smile his mischievous grin and look at her with fond eyes and say something like “Come on, sis. Don’t tell me you were getting worried.” And then she’d shove him without meaning it, letting her hand linger on his chest, where there would be no ticking bomb, and together they’d fly home.

But no matter how many rocks she turned, he wasn’t behind any of them. And there was no home she knew of.

At some point, Krillin showed up yet again, wearing a concerned frown on his face and asking if she perhaps needed any help looking for Seventeen. It’s a testament to Eighteen’s weariness how fast her initial reaction morphed from telling him to get lost, to reluctantly agreeing. They established a routine of sorts, then. At night he would leave to get some rest, always inviting her to join him and being rejected every time. By dawn, he would already be back to find her in a rapidly deteriorating state, such as her current one.

He’s witnessed multiple meltdowns at this point, and she’s long stopped being embarrassed about it. She stays on the ground, chest heaving and hair slapping against her face. Her mind is blank when she hears Krillin land near her, and by now she’s seen it so many times she can easily imagine the look on his face. The sun is setting and she knows what he’s about to say.

“Maybe it would be good if you could rest a little. It doesn’t have to be at my place, but if you have nowhere else to go, you’re welcome there. I’m sure it’ll be much easier to find him with a clear head.”

She looks up from the ground and stares at him through thick strands of blond hair, then blinks. She’s so tired. Not physically, given her nature, though she wishes she could just pass out for an indefinite amount of time. No, her mind is exhausted. Her limbs may be starting to twitch and it feels like something is slithering its way through her organs, trying to break her from the inside out.

More than anything, there’s an unmistakable feeling weighing down on her chest: she wants to go home, but she doesn’t know where that is. She wonders, almost delirious, if she can ever stop grieving the life she doesn’t remember.

Her hands shake when she brushes the hair out of her eyes and nods.

|||

She’s lounging in a deck chair at that time of day when no one’s sure whether to say “good evening” or “good morning”. It’s probably her favorite part of her day, laying there with her feet half buried in the sand and the smell of the sea mere meters away from her. It’d be almost glamorous, if she could manage to ignore the tiny house that looms behind her and the fact that the nearest city is an ocean away from her.

 No, it’s not the sophisticated life she would have dreamed of just months ago, but she had to drop those childish ambitions. They were too heavy. Besides, she could have it much worse than a relaxing view and a loving fiancé.

The word startles her, sounding foreign even in her thoughts, though she hasn’t agreed to it yet. She guesses it’ll come naturally to her, in time, when she says yes. _If_ she says yes. Six hours after a proposal is too soon to tell.

She’d seen it coming, and still, when Krillin knelt before her after finishing the fancy meal that had taken him an afternoon to prepare, she was paralyzed.

Krillin had foreseen that, though. He told her she could have as much time as she needed to think about it and that he didn’t want her to feel any pressure. Then he left her alone.

Eighteen stares at the stars as if they are any more willing to share their wisdom than they were six hours ago. She feels she doesn’t have the authority to make such a decision. What would the old her say? Would she jump with glee at the prospect of creating a family of her own, or would she scoff at the idea of such a dull, mundane life and the implication that her brother wasn’t family enough?

She grits her teeth. That Eighteen ceased to exist a long time ago, and she’ll never be back. Much like her brother, whose search she finally abandoned a week ago. After scouring the world with Krillin for years, she’s finally come to terms with the fact that at best, Seventeen’s path is never to meet hers, and at worst, he doesn’t want to be found. If he lives at all. He could have died yesterday and she’d be none the wiser. It’s easier not to think about it, though. Not to think about anything.

Anyway, he isn’t here to advise her, and something tells her she would rather not hear what he’d have to say if he was. In the end, the only person who can accept or reject Krillin’s proposal is her.

She doesn’t love him; she knows as much. But she doesn’t love anything else either, and the half-hearted endearment that surges through her every morning she wakes up to his adoring eyes is the most _anything_ she’s felt since she can remember. Maybe she wasn’t like this before. Maybe that old man broke in her whatever human beings have that make them care about each other.

And if at any point in her old life she needed a better reason to marry a man than just because she “might as well”, it’s irrelevant when she enters the house, takes the little box out of a desk drawer and slips the ring on her finger.

|||

She spends the next few months telling herself how glad she is that Seventeen won’t be there to see her marry.

On her wedding day, as she walks down the aisle in a pretty (if modest) white dress, she can’t help but watch the crowd gathered around her, looking for a pair of blue eyes that perfectly mirror hers. Then she says “I do”.

|||

When she finally finds it, it’s been four years.

She’d been feeling off all day. Her skin would itch, shivers would race up and down her spine, and her heart would suddenly start trying to beat out of her chest. After many healthy years she’d guessed androids were immune to all illnesses, but at some point in the afternoon she decided to follow her husband’s advice and take a nap.

Marron, her newborn daughter, woke her up long after dusk, filling their room in Kame House with her insufferable shrieking. Eighteen rolled around in the bed she shares with her husband and looked at him, waiting. Krillin had been getting up every night ever since she’d been born, so it was both surprising and expected that he slept on, as if the crying baby was on a different island altogether.

Eighteen loves Marron as much as she loves Krillin. She’d been an unplanned addition to their lives that she feels apathetic about most of the time. The pregnancy had been relatively easy when compared to that of a regular woman, she’d been told, and to be honest, the worst thing she felt during those months was mild annoyance. But there’s a small person to take care of now, and thankfully Krillin has been doing both of their shares, which is fair as far as Eighteen is concerned: he was, by far, the most enthusiastic about being a parent.

Realizing the crying isn’t likely to stop anytime soon, she picks the baby up from her crib and paces about the house, rocking her gently until the only sound left is her light snoring. She knows, from the many nights she has pretended to be asleep while Krillin dealt with the same situation, that Marron will wake the second she is set back in her crib, so she opts to take her out to the beach and bask in the quiet before disturbing her again.

The second she steps on the sand, she feels her heartbeat go haywire and her fingertips buzz. Her jaw aches from shaking so much. It’s cold outside, as it always is, and by the time she remembers that, unlike her, Marron can get sick, she’s already by the shore, staring in awe at her twin.

His face is exactly as she remembers it, she can tell even if it’s only illuminated by the moonlight. She knows it better than she does her own; no amount of time would be able to blur his features in her mind. He looks healthier and cleaner than the last time she saw him, which (she realizes with both relief and horror) was when he was being morbidly murdered by a monster.

Her legs shake ever so slightly, as if trying to send her toppling into a much-needed hug. She doesn’t budge, thankful for the child she’s still holding to her clavicle, allowing her to seem much more composed than she actually is.

She notices him examining her in the same way, only sparing a second to look at Marron before glancing back at her face. There’s a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Hey, sis.”

She takes a shaky breath, waiting for a moment so the words come out as nonchalant as possible. They seem to travel from the deepest parts of the ocean before they reach her mouth.

“How did you find me?”

“I asked around,” he shrugs. “Eventually found that scientist friend of yours, she filled me in.”

She can’t look at him straight, diverting her gaze towards the moon, his clothes, a spot over his shoulder.

“I looked for you for years,” her voice is quiet, as if she isn’t sure she wants him to hear.

He throws her an odd look.

“I know. Gotta be honest, dying doesn’t even suck as much as being brought back. Your soul is halfway out of your body, you can barely remember a thing, and you’re scared as fuck. As soon as I woke up I flew away, didn’t really know where I was going. I was trying to find you.”

Eighteen doesn’t tell him that sounds more like the side effects of being away from your twin, rather than of being resurrected. She instead focuses on holding back the tears that have started to build up in her eyes. Tears. Her heart skips a beat.

She’s never cried before. In the four years of existence of the Android Number Eighteen, not once has she shed a tear. Not when Marron was born, definitely not when she got married. After a while, she just assumed she couldn’t. It made sense: why keep such a useless human function in a killing machine?

Maybe Gero’s modifications don’t go nearly as deep as she thought. Maybe the constant feeling of being set in autopilot has a more mundane explanation. The first few days after Cell’s death are a blur in her mind, and the first clear memory she has after that is of waking up in Kame House, feeling empty and bored. Even her searching became much more lethargic, doing it out of a sense of duty rather than having any actual hope of finding Seventeen. She even managed to delude herself into thinking he could be dead.

Marron stirs in her arms and she almost feels like dropping her, tasting the panic rising up her throat. How long has she been going through the motions, convincing herself that her lack of caring arose from a physical inability to do so, and not from simply not wanting this life?

A tear finally manages to slide down her face, and Seventeen furrows his brow. They both know how uncharacteristic of her this is. He parts his lips to say something she already knows she doesn’t deserve, so she beats him to it.

“I’m sorry,” her voice doesn’t crack, so she keeps going. “I should’ve looked harder. I should’ve gone to that island before you left. I shouldn’t have given up. Ever.”

It’s as if she’s just woken up from what she assumed to be a dream, only to realize she’s been awake the whole time and must now face the consequences of what she did when she thought it didn’t matter. Seventeen holds out his arms and Eighteen has enough presence of mind to hand Marron to him before her legs finally give out and she drops to the ground.

Her fingers dig into the sand as she hyperventilates and stares at the waves that threaten to swallow her body. She can almost see the mess she’s made spelled out in the foam, not just her life and Krillin’s, but the whole new person sleeping still in her brother’s arms. When the water actually reaches her, she jerks back, hugging her legs and resting her chin on her knees.

Seventeen sits down beside her, and she never realized how different his touch feels from anyone else’s and how much she’s craved it. He holds the baby the same way Krillin does, and she wonders briefly what he’s been up to. She doesn’t want to ask.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, not looking at her. “I could have waited for you. We weren’t in our right minds. It doesn’t even matter now, though. I’ve found you. We’re together now.”

She turns her head to look at him, and he mirrors her. He must see it now, how that isn’t true. It does matter. They’ve lost something and they can never get it back. Their lives, which had been entangled since birth and should’ve stayed that way until death, were shattered apart, never to be one again.

“I’m sorry,” she says, managing to keep her tears at bay.

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeats, and she doesn’t get it at all.

She lays her head on his shoulder and reaches for his hand. He meets her halfway.

“What’s her name?” he asks, glancing down at the child still miraculously asleep on his lap.

“Marron.”

He snorts.

“Yeah, it wasn’t my idea.”

“Baldy’s, then?” his voice tightens a bit, and she sees through his calm façade for the first time, catching a glimpse of the hurt and resentment he so adamantly tries to hide.

“I-yeah. My husband,” the words feel wrong.

He doesn’t say anything, and she’s afraid of the places his mind could be going. His body tenses up and she’s ready to throw any and all dignity out the window and beg him to stay with her, but he just adjusts himself so he can accommodate her body better.

“Tell me what would’ve happened if we had found each other back then,” she asks, and it’s cruel, but she’s tired of grieving things she doesn’t know.

He stays quiet for so long that she doesn’t think he’ll answer until he does.

“We… would’ve kept terrorizing civilians to get our way. We wouldn’t really hurt them, you know, just scare them until we had as much money as we needed. And then we’d get more cars and more ridiculous dresses than we could ever use, and we’d go all around the world pretending to be rich people, which to be fair, we would be, but not as stuck up. And eventually we’d get bored and find some isolated village where people wouldn’t see all the crazy shit we’d get up to, and settle down there. And it’d be fine. We’d be fine.”

Eighteen sighs and bites her lip. She can tell by the confidence in his voice that he wasn’t making that up as he went along. He’s given deep thought to this. They’re quiet for a while, soaking up the story that never was and saying goodbye to it. The sky turns orange as the sun abandons its hiding spot under the sea, blinding them, and so they lay down on their backs, hands still intertwined.

“I should leave. We don’t want your husband to worry when he doesn’t find you in bed,” he mutters after a while.

She tightens her hold on him.

“Please. Just a little longer.”

He doesn’t argue.

|||

She wakes up one morning with an image in her mind, sharp as real life, of her laying on the grass of some unknown meadow, digging her fingers into the dirt at her sides. When she looked up, she could make out a few rays of sunshine filtering through the leaves of a weeping willow that hung above her body, and if she focused, she could hear the sound of flowing water, probably a river in her proximity.

Once she realized she wasn’t in any immediate danger, she turned her head to the side; and almost as if she was expecting it, didn’t startle when she found her twin lying right beside her. He had a sheepish look in his eye as he said something Eighteen couldn’t hear, but before she could be confused about that, he climbed on top of her and straddled her, placing one hand at each side of her head. He leaned down then, just enough for her to feel the ends of his hair tickle her cheeks.

That’s when Eighteen wakes up, her heart slamming against her ribcage and her eyes scanning the bedroom as if she could find the answer to this disturbing vision etched into the walls. She stays still as her brain plays the same words over and over. _“They look like they make a good couple. She’ll be happy with him.”_

Her body jerks until she’s sitting, and she throws on a coat with trembling hands as she stumbles into the kitchen, aggressively trying to think about something else, anything. There she finds Krillin, cooking up some breakfast to bring to her in bed as is his custom on the weekends. While one hand is occupied with a frying pan, the other is holding Marron, who screams out “Momma!” as soon as she sees her, alerting Krillin of her presence.

Eighteen walks up to her husband, who looks like he’s just been caught doing something he shouldn’t, and takes their daughter into her arms. In the last couple of months, as Marron stopped being a sack of screeching flesh and turned into something resembling a human, Eighteen found she quite liked spending time with her every once in a while. The kid could already babble some words and run around the house giggling when it was time for her to be bathed, and truthfully, waking up every morning to see Seventeen’s eyes, even if they were on a little girl’s face, made everything worth it.

She told Krillin about her brother’s first visit the morning after the fact. It’d seemed only fair: after all, she hadn’t been the only one looking for him day after day for years on end. He was happy enough for her, asking her to invite him for dinner sometime so that Marron could meet her uncle. She told Krillin she was incapable of doing so, and only noticed she wasn’t lying when she realized that Seventeen had left no way of contacting him. She wasn’t worried though, now that he’d found her she knew he’d never let her slip between his fingers again.

And soon enough, Seventeen was back, always at the same unlikely hour. Marron would be up sometimes, and so they would play all night, the three of them, while Krillin slept on, blissfully unaware. That, too, was of importance in the process of warming up to life as a mother.  

Eighteen takes her daughter to play in the sand for a while, and when Krillin calls out for them, having just finished making the pancakes, she doesn’t tell him about what she saw when she woke up. They both know androids don’t dream.

|||

Seventeen’s visits start being few and far between as the years go by, until he only shows up every three months or so, carrying toys for Marron and, if he’s feeling particularly giving, jewelry for his sister. She suspects something significant must be going on in his life, but he never tells and so she never asks. “ _It’s better this way”_ , she thinks to herself every time her brother disappears at dawn. All she knows about his whereabouts is the mountain he’s told her he lives by, and she keeps that information carefully stored in her mind. She doesn’t think she’ll ever have to use it, Seventeen will never stop visiting sporadically, but it’s the only safe place she knows outside of her little island, the only hiding spot she knows in case things go wrong.

Things definitely do go wrong when another monster appears threatening Earth, much more powerful than Cell ever was, and once again Goku’s left as humanity’s only hope. She barely keeps it together in front of everyone else, protecting her daughter whenever she needs to and hoping Krillin is alright, too, for Marron loves him dearly and he knows how to handle her best. It’s all for nothing, in the end, as she is killed along with her family and then promptly brought back to life by the same dragon that resurrected her brother before.

It shakes her a little more than she lets on. For days afterward, while her family is safe in their beds, she lays awake, battling the desperate need that burns within her ribcage. She has to see him. She can’t wait for him this time. _“Dying really does drive that twin bond insane”_ , she thinks.

She lasts three days before she’s flying off in the middle of the night, putting all her unlimited energy to good use as she soars above ocean and land until she finds the mountain she already thinks of as her second home.

There’s a cabin in the woods, as she knew there would be, with big windows that hint at the soft glow of a fire inside. She decides to take a peek, just to confirm what her thumping heart already knows: her brother is in there. What she doesn’t know is how different things would play out if she just knocked on the door, but alas, she doesn’t.

Her brother is there, correct; and there’s a fire burning in the hearth alright. What she’s failed to foretell is the blond woman snuggled up against Seventeen, and the way her brother catches sight of Eighteen in the reflection of a mirror and freezes, only for her to turn away and take off into the sky, ignoring the beast-like thing growing in her stomach and threatening to swallow her whole.

She zigzags in the air, almost tumbling down to the ground, so disoriented and blindsided she physically can’t tell where she is or where she’s supposed to be going. Her mind and eyes cloud over with something that feels like rage but also doesn’t at all.

She shouldn’t be so shocked, not after hearing that voice in the back of her mind for years, whispering suspicions and being ignored in favor of still thinking of her brother as someone that was, and would ever be, hers only. It’s a sick notion, and hypocritical too, but now she isn’t just angry at him for belonging to someone else, but also for watching her do the same thing and not stopping her.

This shouldn’t happen. She didn’t even know if she’d ever see him again when she married Krillin, otherwise she never would have. But Seventeen knows. Unless… could it be that he genuinely wanted that kind of life for himself? Was Gero really so cruel that he would make it so that only _she_ would be unable to love anyone she didn’t love before?

When she realizes she’s not flying above land anymore, she stops dead on her tracks and blasts energy at the sea, watching the water rise and bend, shaping waves that will surely be featured in every newscast in the morning. For the first time in years, she is aware of the raw power she possesses and how easily she could tap into it, that electric current that darts through the veins just beneath her skin. The water sloshes until she is soaking wet, and she should stop now if she doesn’t want to alert another z-fighter, but she knows that the moment her breathing weakens and her vision clears, the outside world will once again be veiled by the same sepia tone that dulls her every feeling and thought.

And sometimes she wishes she didn’t just hear the echoes of the world around her, unable to feel something about it.

She doesn’t know how long she stays there, hovering over the tides that refuse to drowse once awakened, but she doesn’t wait for them. She rushes back to Kame House, which is close enough for her handiwork to be noticeable but not so much that the massive waves will swallow it.

Krillin is already standing outside, concern etched into his features and his lips parted in anticipation of a question she doesn’t let him ask. Her hair and clothes cling to her body as she tackles him to the sand, not sure if she wants to fight him or fuck him, and hoping he can’t tell whose face she’ll be picturing either way.

|||

The next time she sees her brother, over a year has passed. He bears no gifts other than the fist bump he gives Marron and the kiss he presses against Eighteen’s cheek. She sees then, the golden ring on his left hand, and wonders for a moment if this is truly the first time she’s seen it. If he notices her staring, he doesn’t show it, and neither of them mentions that night.

|||

It takes a few more years for her to notice the fact that she almost doesn’t seem to be aging. As the lines on her husband’s face deepen, she’s barely starting to show the signs of early adulthood. It’s just another thing that’s been stolen from her: the right to know how old she is, or her _(their)_ own birthday.

She watches Marron produce a Happy Birthday card for her daddy, sitting at the luxurious mahogany table that Mr. Satan’s money has bought them, and notices that they’re almost the same height now. Inevitably she’ll catch up to her, two beautiful blond sisters that no one will guess are actually mother and daughter. Later that will change, of course, but in an entirely wrong way. A fantasy flashes through her mind of a senile, bed-bound Marron being taken care of by a beautiful young woman she won’t even recognize as her mother.

Eighteen retreats to her room so she can pick an outfit from her new collection and spend an hour going through the hundreds of earrings she owns, waiting for Krillin to come back from work so they can eat the chocolate cake baked by the new maid. Tomorrow they’ll meet their friends for brunch at Bulma’s, but tonight it’s just the three of them, as per Krillin’s request. She doesn’t mind this plan, having learned to be somewhat entertained by this group of people she’s grudgingly been seeing several times a year.

Krillin comes home, and they paint a beautiful picture, the three of them, sitting at a too large table, wearing fancy, itchy clothing and sipping wine from ridiculously expensive glasses. It’s ideal, it’s absolutely perfect and it’s boring her to death. Krillin talks about his impending promotion while Marron babbles on and on about the history presentation she gave today, and neither of them is actually listening to the other. Eighteen swallows down cake that her body doesn’t need and that has a remarkably similar consistency to toothpaste while not tasting much better.

|||

“One day we’ll be the only ones left,” she tells her brother when he stops by later that night.

 He smiles.

|||

Sometimes she thinks she’s underestimated Krillin. That maybe when she wakes up in the morning he can somehow see those not-dreams painted across her face. Or possibly her breathing changes a little whenever Marron mentions Seventeen, and that’s why her husband’s gaze darts towards her, surveying.

It always takes her a second to remember that of course he knows _something_. He’s her twin and her body will always betray that. She misses her brother, even a stranger could see that. There’s nothing inherently illicit about her feelings, and yet the guilt that gnaws at her throat every time she sees him is impossible to ignore.

He comes over sometimes, when it’s been months since they last saw each other, and she throws half-hearted punches at his face so he can deflect them indefinitely; and that’s all they do some nights, let her feed off of her own thrill and fury that she can’t feel when he isn’t there.

And some would deem it unfair, the way she’s doomed to live for each sporadic visit that never lasts more than a few hours and never offers her any answers or mercy, but she knows better. As much as she’s consumed by anger every time she watches him fly off into the sunrise, she knows she is the one to blame. For giving up, for not finding her twin and punishing herself with an insufficient life.

So what if Krillin ever looks into her eyes and sees things that shouldn’t be there? He was the one who started it in the first place, she says to herself every night she finds herself staring at her husband with a resentment bigger than herself. He said it so many years ago, and she doesn’t think he’s forgotten about it.

Maybe the problem traces back to what it always does: the life she lived but remembers nothing about. If she had any memories of that immature, dependent bond they must have had as twins when they were children, then she wouldn’t have to go through it now as a married, adult woman. Perhaps then her mind would be free of the morbid and obsessive thoughts that constantly linger in the background.

It’s in the few times that Seventeen and Krillin actually meet that she notices how her husband’s whole demeanor changes around both twins, his head hanging low and his eyes evasive with the same shame a thief might show around his victim. She wonders what exactly he thinks he’s stolen from them.

|||

One of her least favorite things to think about (and, naturally, the one she thinks about the most) is the story of the boy with the lilac hair, the one from the future. It took years for Krillin to finally tell her about it, and she has always suspected that delay to have been born out of fear that she would take a page out of her own book and team up with her brother to wipe out humanity.

Most of the time, it’s an irrational fear. In this timeline, she has a loving husband a beautiful daughter and, most importantly, she isn’t a genocidal machine programmed too far past the point of empathy. Also, she isn’t murdered along with her brother by said boy with strangely colored hair, which is always a plus.

And still, some days it doesn’t seem so clear. It’s as if even this version of her wasn’t let off with her humanity intact, because when Krillin goes off to work for most of the day and Marron gets on a Capsule Corp. boat to attend school, she sits on the couch and stares at a blank, flat TV screen, thinking. She imagines an Eighteen that is her as much as she isn’t, caught in a permanent adrenaline rush with the sole company of her twin, and feels nothing but a vague, undirected sadness.

She develops a way of coping with it as the years go by, though. She likes to think there’s another timeline, one where she and her brother are reunited after the Cell Games and they live the life that Seventeen whispered in her ear all those years ago. Or better yet, a timeline where they grow up together and aren’t kidnapped and tortured by a mad scientist.

It’s a cruel game that she plays with herself, but the boy from the future has taught her that there are much crueler games she could play.

|||

Of course, Marron goes on to marry this cocky, incessant child that as an adult only resembles his counterpart in physical appearance. While not the brightest bulb in the box (certainly not next to her daughter), the kid has always shied away from Eighteen in the gatherings typically hosted by Bulma, and she can’t say the feeling isn’t mutual. The few times their gazes have met she’s always seen some kind of recognition in his eyes, as well as contriteness, as if somewhere in his soul laid the remnants of the warrior that annihilated her in another time.

So, she attends the outrageously costly wedding party that Bulma planned for months in advance, dressed in her most outrageously costly dress to match and plays her part as a new mother-in-law, while looking just as young as the bride. She goes around the ballroom shaking people’s hands -she makes a point to always, always go for Vegeta’s left, and he usually complies with a quirked brow, as if they were two old friends referencing a gory inside joke- and courteously nodding at every compliment she gets, which are many.

When she’s finally made her way through the hundreds of guests (and recognized a quarter of them at most), she spots her brother standing by a glass door that leads to the garden, wearing a black suit that brings out the color of his eyes. It’s the most dazzling she’s ever seen him, and this thought is almost corroborated by the giggling group of girls that, like her, have their eyes glued on him from the other side of the room. It shouldn’t be surprising, considering he definitely does not look like a grown woman’s uncle, but she is still startled by the sudden awareness that her brother’s charms don’t go unnoticed by the female population.

She takes a second to shake off the shock before she approaches him. She was expecting to run into him at some point during the night, after all, the beloved uncle Seventeen was one of the first guests that made it to the list. Marron and Trunks were both at Kame House the day it was concocted, and she didn’t miss the way the boy’s body cringed at the mention of yet another android he has technically-but-not-really murdered.

Eighteen makes her way to Seventeen dodging overexcited young adults and inebriated old ladies, and he doesn’t directly look at her until she’s mere centimeters from him.

“Amazing high-society skills you’ve got going on there, sis,” he mocks as he hides his smile in the rim of a champagne flute he sneakily picked up from a waiter’s tray.

“Shut up.”

“Mmm. What do we think about homeboy Trunks over there?”

She shrugs, snatching the glass from her brother’s hand and gulping down the remaining contents.

“He’s nice enough. A little bit of a clown but Marron’s into that, it seems.”

“You’ve done it, then. She has a family of her own now,” he sounds amused as his eyes search for his niece in the crowd.

Eighteen’s gaze follows his, and finds Marron laughing at the mockery of a waltz Goten and Trunks are dancing. She can’t help the genuine smile that tugs at her lips at seeing her daughter brimming with joy. It’s undeniable to her now, that she does actually love the person she’s grown to become. Even when the question arises in her mind every now and again, of whether she would still love her if she didn’t know she is supposed to, the answer she’s come to find in time, is that it doesn’t matter.

She turns to her brother, who’s still staring at Marron with the same pride and joy she’s seen in Krillin’s eyes and in every mirror, and she thinks she gets it now. Looking at her daughter, she realizes that maybe he saw in her the same virtue that she did, just from a different perspective.

Marron’s eyes don’t only resemble Seventeen’s, but also Eighteen’s. And doesn’t it make sense to love a person that’s half someone you already love?

She stares at him until he meets her gaze with a quirked brow, as if wondering why she suddenly looks like she just had the air knocked out of her lungs, and her mouth opens and closes in uncharacteristic hesitance. She thinks he’s going to ask about it, but he leans in conspiratorially and asks with the slightest bit of irony so only she would catch it if anyone else was listening:

“Care for a dance?”

She notices how the music has morphed from the upbeat, catchy tune that was playing to a slow waltz multiple couples are swaying to, most notably the bride and groom in the center of the room.

She swallows; then spots the nearest available surface to set down her glass. She takes his hand and gets instantly startled by the lack of any jewelry on it. She can’t help but look down, checking both hands to confirm the only wedding ring in the vicinity is hers. A sudden, absurd need overcomes her, to take it off so that nothing gets in the way of her skin and his.

That thought is dropped –along with every other one, really- when she feels him place a hand on her waist and start moving.

They don’t take it seriously at first, pretending to dance rather than actually doing it. It feels a lot like they’re children mimicking something they saw in a boring movie for grown-ups, and she can see out of the corner of her eye a pair of affronted-looking old people pursing their lips at their disregard for etiquette. Seventeen must notice them too, because the second they look at each other they break into a fit of laughter that certainly doesn’t earn them any points with the elderly.

Eventually, she manages to calm down long enough to let her gaze wander across her brother’s features, and tries to think of a way to tell him that she can’t remember the last time she laughed like that, and doesn’t know when she will again. She wants to tell him she can feel his pulse with her fingertips, and that she instinctively knows it matches hers. His body is warm and solid against her, his face the most handsome it’s ever been, probably as a result of actually looking like an adult now, and…

She wants to go home with him. To him.

She wants to make up scenarios in their minds of what their lives were and could have been. She wants to engage in a heated discussion one second and have forgotten about it by the next. She wants to trace her brother’s muscles with her fingers. She wants to bite the tender skin of his neck and hear what noise he makes when she does so. She wants, wants, wants so many things that aren’t allowed.

It makes her sick, thinking about dancing with him for real and having everyone in the room scowl at them for an entirely different reason. She starts to sneak peeks at the other guests, terrified that they can somehow read the hunger tattooed on her skin.

“Sis.”

She jumps in her brother’s arms, looks him in the eye then immediately looks away. She settles for staring at his chest.

“Why… Why does it always feel like you’re waiting?” she manages to get out, finding the courage to ask the question that’s been roaming her mind since they reunited years ago.

He seems taken aback, tilting his head to the side and biting his lip in a single moment of weakness.

“Waiting for what?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know.”

He does actually appear to consider answering for a second, until he spots something above her shoulder that makes his hands drop to the side, ending their make-belief dancing session. Her skin screams in agony.

“Your husband seems to be in dire need of a dance, sis.”

She turns around to find a sheepish Krillin staring at the floor and avoiding eye contact with either twin, stammering an answer. She convinced him to shave his head again when the first gray hairs started to sprout, as she constantly found herself struggling to focus on what he was saying in favor of staring at his hair with an expression that could be only described as dread, if the look on his face was anything to go by. She bites her lips.

When she looks back to silently apologize to Seventeen, he isn’t there.

|||

By sunrise, the only guests left are the families of the newlyweds and some very close friends. They drag across the dance floor, drunk and exhausted, but unwilling to let the celebration come to an end.

Eighteen is arguably the most composed person in the room, lounging on a love seat in the gardens, accompanied only by the faint pop music that filters through the glass doors and the chirping of the waking birds. She’s on the verge of falling asleep (which she would have done much earlier if she wasn’t equipped with an infinite supply of energy) when the door slides behind her and she cracks open an eye to see Bulma.

The woman, most likely seeking some fresh air after the three drinks Eighteen actually saw her have and the others that undoubtedly slipped her notice, trips her way onto the seat next to her. She brushes her hair out of her eyes, sighing, and then proceeds to startle at the sight of the android.

“Ah! Didn’t see you there…” she slurs, a lazy grin playing with her mouth.

Eighteen merely hums in acknowledgment, bracing herself for the incessant chatter the other undoubtedly has in store. She has always been largely unbothered by Bulma, having even let her examine her mechanical body in the past, but she has sat through numerous drunken rants on high society matters by this point, and she’s as uninterested as ever.

She’s already so tuned out that she almost misses the words that come out of the woman’s mouth.

“’S a shame how little we get to see of that brother of yours, you know. The number of sponsorships I would land with a face like that backing me up…”

Eighteen can’t help but straighten up in her chair, fully awake and rolling her eyes at herself for being set on edge by the sole mention of Seventeen’s good looks.

“I’m afraid he’s not cut out for that kind of life,” she says, amused at the thought of her brother confined in an office for the rest of his days. 

“Mmm,” Bulma agrees. “He could at least let me study his mechanisms someday. He owes me a favor, after all.”

Eighteen thinks back to the night she got him back. Or at least, pieces of him. She’s never really stopped to think about it, but she realizes now that a thank you is long overdue.

“You told him where I was, right?” she starts, and it should be obvious how rhetorical a question it is, but Bulma either doesn’t care or is too inebriated to notice.

“Well yeah, sure, but you’d expect a little more gratitude for lending him the dragon radar, I mean…”

Eighteen’s train of thought comes to a screeching halt, then dashes off the tracks.

“What did you just say?” she perches on her seat, hands subconsciously gripping at the armchairs.

Bulma shoots her a disapproving glare, clearly about to tell her off for interrupting her rant, but then her mouth snaps closed. Her eyes dart across flowery bushes and colorful garlands, looking soberer than she has in the whole night.

“I meant, I… he didn’t…”

Eighteen lifts a hand, cutting her off once again.

“Bulma. What were you talking about, now. No bullshit.”

 Bulma’s fingers tangle in her hair when she tries to run a hand through it.

“Well, he just showed up at the labs one day, demanding to know where the rest of the dragon balls were. He’d managed to find a few on his own, you know, truly impressive…” Eighteen huffs, for once in her life too impatient to hear about her brother’s achievements. “Anyways, I asked him what in the world he needed them for, you have to consider that the last I’d heard about him was that his life’s mission was to kill Goku. He said he just wanted to find you, so obviously I told him I knew where you were. I was hoping he would leave then, but he still wanted the radar… So I helped him with that and that’s it, that’s all I know.”

It takes a few seconds for her to remember that a few days before Seventeen showed up at her door, the sky had gone dark in the middle of the day. Krillin later mentioned that Bulma had called right after and given an explanation Eighteen didn’t care about then and doesn’t remember now, but that definitely didn’t involve her brother.

“What did he ask for?” she asks, and it comes out harsher than she intended it to, but she can hear the blood rushing in her ears and her fingernails tearing through the armrest of her chair.

“I don’t know,” Bulma answers, and there’s so much sorrow in her voice and pity in her eyes that she can’t help but believe her. 

Eighteen barges into the ballroom, knowing with everything but her heart that her brother won’t be there.

|||

The room smells of fabric softener and vegetable soup when she opens the door. It’s an old house, and no matter how many times she’s tried over the past week, she hasn’t managed to lessen the creaking of the wood every time she enters the room. Krillin’s eyes flutter open, a weak smile spreading across his leathery features and deepening his already prominent smile lines in its wake.

She approaches the bed and sits down at his side. She tugs the covers over his shoulders, despite the fact that it’s summer and even setting foot on the sand outside burns the soles of her feet.

“I just came here to check on you,” Eighteen shrugs, feeling bad for waking him but knowing he has never needed to hear apologies from her.

“How’s Marron doing?” he rasps, and they can’t pretend they can’t hear the whistling sound coming from his lungs.

“Trunks convinced her to take a nap an hour ago.”

It’s an admirable quality to have, the ability to lay on one’s death bed and be only concerned about the way your family is taking it. She tells him as much because he probably deserves to hear it from her, just once in his lifetime.

He chuckles, or rather tries to, before promptly being cut off by a coughing fit.

“I’m-am not,” he manages to say, then takes a few moments to catch his breath. “I’ve been terribly selfish, you of all people can attest to that. I’ve insisted on keeping you by my side when any sane person could see that it made you miserable. I tried to end it so many times, I promise you…” his voice thickens, and she can tell this has been weighing him down for such a long time that letting go of it is almost as painful as keeping it in. “But I always stopped myself, thinking that if I gave you -gave us just a little more time, you’d eventually learn to love me,” another laugh, bitter.

Everything is wrong with his breathing, and with his heart, and no amount of Dragon Balls can fix it, she’s been told. He’s only been sick for a couple of weeks, and she knows it’s better this way, that he was able to spend his last few months on Earth as bright and free as he’s been his whole life.

Her eyes skit over the food tray abandoned on one side, the medical supplies discarded in a corner, the too-clean floor. She can’t meet his gaze.

“I am so sorry,” he murmurs. “If someone should be commended for their selflessness, it’s you. For spending so many years of your life making a poor man happy when you had no obligation to. For taking care of a daughter you never wanted and for building your life around everybody else’s.”

She wants to argue with him, tell him that she didn’t do any of those things out of kindness, or even a feeling of duty; but rather because standing still and letting things happen around her was the easiest and safest choice there was. Or even better, it was no choice at all. They’ve been married for decades and still he views her as some angelic deity.

He holds her hand. Or maybe she holds his. Even though she has a newborn grandchild while still looking like she’s in her twenties, she’s never felt so youthfully out of place as she does now. His skin is flimsy and rough against hers, and she feels like a loving daughter tending to her deathly ill father.

 “But you still have so much time!” he continues as if having read her mind. “I can’t-I can’t undo the last thirty years, but I can set you free now. Don’t worry about Marron: she’s a grown woman, and she wants you to be happy as much as you want the same for her. So please, if I’m only granted one last wish, is for you to get out of here and be whoever you want to be. You can make it right, you know?”

Her breathing is shaky when she finally gathers the courage to look him in the eye.

“You’re my best friend,” she says, because it’s true.

This time, his smile crawls all the way up from his lips and settles in his eyes.

“And, Eighteen? Apologize to Seventeen for me, too.”

|||

It’s a beautiful, sunny day when Krillin is buried. Marron complains the whole morning, deeming it entirely inappropriate that the sky dares to drown the cemetery in such a cheery atmosphere; and by noon Eighteen has had enough, pointing out how the weather is a reflection of his life, rather than his death. Marron seems appeased by this explanation and thus is left with no trivial matters to discuss, forced to face her new -yet permanent- condition as fatherless. Trunks is there to catch her when she crumbles to the ground, and in that moment Eighteen knows her family will be alright.

Goku gives the eulogy in all his clumsy, tongue-twisted glory, and it must be pretty good because all the remaining z-fighters burst into tears by the halfway mark. He definitely looks older than he did when she first met him, but nowhere near as old as the wrinkled humans gathered there. They must be a curious-looking group, she thinks, half of them well into old age, while she and the Saiyans remain stuck in some sort of time-warping limbo.

Seventeen arrives late, as per his custom, and is greeted by a bawling Marron flinging herself at him. He isn’t wearing black, nor is he clad in a suit like the one he wore at the wedding (even though Eighteen’s imagination often portrays him that way).

She sits on the ground, sheltered under the sparse shadow a tree offers, and watches him exchange words with various attendants, including Piccolo and Bulma. He doesn’t look at her, but she can feel his eagerness to end the formalities and get to her as much as she can feel hers.

When he does finish nodding at Goku and sits next to her, the sun has allowed another meter of shade for him to hide in. They watch the others and don’t talk, enraptured by the image of a peaceful world and the concept of a happy ending. 

In all the time that’s passed since her daughter’s wedding, she hasn’t been able to ask about his wish to the Dragon, and for a second she suspects this must be it, this is the moment to do it. She doesn’t get to, however.

“Are you okay?” it’s a question she’s heard so many times today she might as well tattoo the answer on her forehead, but it sounds so sincere and genuine in his voice that she can’t bring herself to roll her eyes.

“Yes,” comes easy to her lips, and he’s the only person in the cemetery that will ever know she means it.

He moves his hand to touch hers in a way that to most would seem absent-minded, but that feels deliberate. She looks at his beautiful face, so similar to her own, and she’s missed him so much without him ever being really gone. She’s so glad to have him back. That she gets to keep him this time.

They stay there, watching Vegeta tend to a deteriorated Bulma, and Marron and Trunks singing their child to sleep, and Pan laying on Bra’s lap while the latter plays with her hair. She watches them all and is so grateful for these people she’s spent over thirty years resenting.

And in a way, learning not to regret them is the best goodbye she can give them.

“Are you ready?” Seventeen asks.

She takes his hand and they both take off.

|||

There’s nothing left for her in Kame House, so she never goes back.

Instead, she lets Seventeen drag her above sea and land like it’s the first time she’s ever followed that route, that painful night from years ago drifting farther and farther away as they travel, taking that wretched island and her old life with it.

The cabin is bigger than she remembers, and she can’t tell if it’s a manifestation of her current feelings or if Seventeen has actually made any renovations. Either way, they spend what little time of sunlight there’s left to race each other around the forest.

And it’s in that moment, not having even gone into the cabin yet, that the final puzzle piece comes into place. It wasn’t too far off, in fact it’s been inching closer and closer to the right spot for years, but right now she remembers the desperate feeling of wanting to go home that haunted her for years, and she realizes that it’s not there anymore. With the wind slapping her face and tree branches scratching her arms and her brother’s laughter ringing in her ears.

It’s taken her over thirty years to get back home, and she doesn’t regret a minute of it.

Neither wins the race, or maybe they both do, when they get bored of chasing after one another and Eighteen stumbles into the cabin. She rushes to open a random door, caught in an impromptu hide and seek game and delighted to find herself in the master bedroom. Her face aches with the effort of stifling a juvenile laugh when she hears him come through the front door, immediately catching onto her antics.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” his taunts sound muffled from the living room, and she has to shake her head in disbelief at the fact that she hasn’t even spent two hours with him and she’s already acting like a child.

“Come on, sis, I won’t bite… unless you want me to.”

This time she actually snorts, then freezes. Everything’s quiet for a second until Seventeen bursts through the door and corners her against the wall with a speed that would make a regular human think he’s just materialized out of thin air.

“Caught you,” he says, not even bothering to repress the arrogant smirk that starts to stretch across his face, and she can’t take it anymore.

She shoves him backwards and onto the bed, placing her knees at each side of his hips and leaning in so that she’s looking into his eyes.

“I think I caught you.”

She can’t tell which of them moves first, but it hardly matters when her mouth is pressed against his and her heart is thumping so loudly she’s sure anybody within a ten-meter radius can hear it. She hasn’t felt this human, this alive, since she woke up in that mad scientist’s metal chamber.

His fingers skitter across her back and brush her skin where her shirt’s ridden up, and it’s fucking ridiculous, considering she has never been this responsive, but her breath catches in her throat. It feels like her chest is expanding, her skin is reaching feverish temperatures and her hands tingle with the need to stroke, and claw, and _feel._ She trails her fingertips along his jaw, down his neck and across his chest, where she stops for a second to marvel at their matching heartbeats.

Tugging off his shirt comes way too naturally to her, as does getting used to his hands roaming her body and the feeling of him inside her.

|||

The cabin is surrounded by some of the tallest trees Eighteen has ever seen, and so sunlight never filters through the bedroom curtains, especially not right now, when it’s early morning. Her enhanced eyesight barely allows her to make out the color of her brother’s eyes, but she can’t help but be satisfied with this, enjoying the feel of the sheets against her naked skin.

She’s playing with his fingers, entwining their hands and reveling in the fact that for once, there’s nothing coming between them, when he pulls away to prop himself up on one elbow. She quirks an eyebrow, expecting him to crawl back between her legs like he has time and time again during the night.

“Are you okay?” he asks for the second time in a day, the sound of his voice contrasting with the peaceful silence they were submerged in.

She is momentarily taken aback by the unusual lack of jest in his tone, but recovers quickly and sits up against the headboard.

“Of course.”

He nods.

“I just… I don’t want you to regret anything,” he finishes, gaze trailing off.

She doesn’t even know where to begin to dispel his worries, so she starts with a confession.

“You know, Krillin said something about us once. It was so long ago, and he just said it in passing, but I never stopped thinking about it. So whenever I thought about you and how much I wanted to be with you, I’d blame it on this stupid thing he said and I never forgot. I blamed it on Krillin, and Dr. Gero, and everything I could think of because I couldn’t stand the fact that it was all me.”

 “I mean, it wasn’t just you,” his smile is practically audible.

“That’s the thing,” she starts bunching the sheets in her fists. “I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes it seemed like you were completely oblivious, other times it felt like you were gonna ask me to take Marron and disappear with you. And the time after Majin Boo…” she cringes at the thought of that night that neither of them has ever mentioned.

“That was…” he rushes to relieve her. “I should’ve explained, I should’ve gone after you.”

“No. I was being unreasonable and hypocritical. You always had it so much worse and were so much better at handling it.”

He shrugs, looking unconvinced.

“Anyways, you can rest assured that this is nobody’s doing but ours,” he isn’t looking at her.

“Yeah? How are you so sure?”

Her playful demeanor crumbles when he looks into her eyes and says:

 “I made a wish.”

She crawls closer, ignoring the chills that run down her spine when they touch. The question that was on the tip of her tongue ever since the wedding vanished along with everything else when they left the funeral, but now it’s back, carrying years of accumulated curiosity.

“I know. Bulma told me a few years ago. She didn’t know what you asked for, though.”

He looks hesitant, but not surprised.

“Well. I’d been looking for the Dragon Balls just to find out where you were, so when I ran into Bulma I thought that was it, that we could finally go home.”

Eighteen allows herself a second of blind self-hatred for not coming up with the same plan and then gestures for him to continue.

“At first, when she told me about Krillin, I was…” he frowns as if he’s looking for the right word. “Confused. I still thought I could show up and, I don’t know, snap you out of it, you know? But then she mentioned Marron. And I thought that if you were happy enough with your new life to have a baby, then it would be so selfish to try to take your family away from you,” his voice wavers, like he’s struggling to even mention a family of hers that he isn’t a part of, and Eighteen can barely imagine the pain of actually believing in one. “So when I asked the Dragon to give me back my memories and not yours, I thought I was doing what was best for you.”

His words float in her mind before they sink in. Then everything’s fast-paced. Her mouth opens, then shuts. She stands up on the bed, disregarding her state of undress, then sits back down. Her eyes scan his face as if she’s expecting to find all the answers to the questions that have tormented her for years written on it.

He looks just as unsure as she is about what to do next, mixed with a twinge of concern as to what to expect from her.

 “Are you -are you telling me that ever since before you showed up at Kame House for the first time, you’ve been able to remember our previous lives?”

His face contorts with guilt.

“…yes?”

“And that we… have felt this way about each other since we were humans?”

“…yes.”

Her thoughts trip over themselves and her tongue twists with all the questions she could ask. _“How old are we? Where were we born? Who were our parents?”,_ but firstly:

“What’s your name?”

It’s such a simple question, and one she’s kept locked within her mind because of how important it is and how devastatingly unlikely it was to ever be answered.

He tilts his head to the side, disbelieving. Then he smiles.

“I’m Lapis,” he says. “And you’re Lazuli.”

|||

“Wouldn’t asking Bulma be much easier? I’m sure she could restore my memories if given enough time.”

“Unfortunately I don’t think she has that much time left. And besides, we always loved playing treasure hunt.”

|||

Gohan wanders about the baby store. What is an appropriate gift for a newborn granddaughter and two new, stressed mothers? He smiles when he gets to the pacifier section, remembering Mr. Piccolo’s first gift to Pan. It was atrociously green, and Gohan often laughed at the idea of Piccolo not noticing how much it resembled his skin tone. Regardless, it was the only pacifier Pan ever tolerated.

So Gohan searches for the ugliest green pacifier he can find before making a beeline for the checkout. Once his gift is neatly packed in red wrapping paper he walks out into the mall’s hall, glancing both ways in search of Videl, who left him to his own devices half an hour ago, in favor of looking for a specific dress she wanted.

He’s considering whether to turn right or left so that he can peek into every store when he hears an alarm go off. He tenses up, ready to revert to his Great Saiyaman persona and fight any outlaws that dare carry out their criminal deeds in his presence.

He hasn’t even had time to set down the package when he sees them fleeing an antique store. It’s not their supernatural speed what gives them away, or the all-too-familiar orange ball one of them is carrying, or even the fact that they look almost exactly the same as they did the last time he saw them.

No, it’s their thundering laughter what will keep him up tonight, echoing in his mind long after the twins have run past him and Eighteen’s playful wink has faded into a memory.


End file.
